Challenge

The continuing increase of traffic on our roads is a major concern and dominates the government’s transport policy strategy. The development of Mossend Railhead is one example of a forward-thinking scheme that has been designed to address concerns over the growing number of commercial and goods vehicles on our roads. The project forms part of a £2.1 million Government scheme aiming to remove more than 1.3 million lorry miles from Scotland’s roads a year. Lanarkshire firm Peter D Stirling was awarded a Freight Facilities Grant of £1.9 million to develop, expand and improve its railhead facility at Mossend.

The key challenge of the project was to extend the railhead to include a freight handling area, which would allow new container handling equipment to be installed complete with a hard-standing area, trailer park, security fencing and CCTV equipment. An integrated paving, drainage and kerb solution was required to provide not only a hard-standing area capable of withstanding heavy vehicle loads but also a high capacity drainage system with the ability to drain water away from the predominantly flat environment which Mossend presented.

Solution

Marshalls worked closely with engineers Dougal Baillie and contractors AWG on the design of the drainage and block paving for the extension to the railhead.

The load transfer properties of the Eskoo Six combined with the high containment Titan kerb provided the ideal paving and kerb solution for the railhead hardstanding area. A combination of Beany Block and Max-E Channel provided the necessary properties for solving Mossend's drainage challenges. In all, Marshalls supplied 500 metres of Beany Block and Max-E Channel drainage combined with 14,000 m2 of Eskoo Six block paving and Titan Kerb.

Benefits

Eskoo Six was selected due to its incredibly high strength, with the added benefit of being machine-laid, enabling more metres to be laid per hour. The combined ability of the Beany Block and Max-E Channel drainage system to withstand a high capacity of water with no longitudinal fall was particularly important due to the fl at nature of the site. In addition, they are easy to lay and are suitable for a variety of applications and vehicular traffic.

Marshalls’ expertise, knowledge and experience in providing integrated drainage, paving and kerb products ensured the best products were specified to meet the requirements of the project. The combined product mix provided both tangible and economic benefits enabling Marshalls to provide an effi cient and cost-effective solution which added real value to the project.